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President €Iiof . . . 

and 

Jesuit Colleges . . 



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REVIEW PUBLISHING CO 

194 Washington St 
Boston, Mass 




President Eliot. 

(Mtu ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Jesuit Colleges 



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BY THE 

REVEREND TIMOTHY BROSNAHAN, S.J. 
H 

WOODSTOCK COLLEGE 
WOODSTOCK, MD. 









By Transfer 

U. S. Office o£ Education 

NOV 1 7 1936 



EXTRACTS 

FROM AN IMPORTANT EDITORIAL IN THE 

"SACRED HEART REVIEW/' 

January 13, 1900. 

"The scholarly paper of the Rev. Timothy 
Brosnahah, of Woodstock, Md., which appears 
this week in the Review, and which, as the 
reader will see, constitutes a categorical, com- 
prehensive, yet very conservative refutation of 
certain statements embodied in an article that 
President Eliot of Harvard University contri- 
buted to the last October number of the Atlantic 
Monthly, was offered by its author to that pub- 
lication, which declined it on the ground that 
it could not open its pages to controversy. In- 
asmuch as the Atlantic Monthly, in its December 
issue, printed a paper from the pen of Andrew 
F. West of Princeton University, " Is There a 
Democracy of Studies?", in which the New 
Jersey professor took exceptions to, and con- 
troverted very effectively, and even less con- 
servatively than Father Brosnahan does in his 
article, the leading statements of President 
Eliot's October paper, the Atlantic' s reason 
for declining the Jesuit's contribution seems 
strangely inconsistent and rather disingenuous. 



* o * * # 

"It is not at all easy to understand why 
President Eliot should publicly stultify himself 
in the way he has done in this issue. There 
are those having the means of knowing who 
say that for years back the head of Harvard 
University has systematically labored by every 
means in his control, to bring about a condi- 
tion which would compel all Catholic young- 
men in this section of the country who are 
desirous of a college education to go to 
Harvard for it. And certainly the marked 
manner wherein, in his October article, he 
singles out the Jesuit schools as special objects 
of his unwarranted and unfounded charges 
lend color to that statement. Can it be pos- 
sible that the Atlantic Monthly, in permitting 
Professor West to defend Protestant institutions 
from President Eliot's allegations and in re- 
fusing to allow Father Brosnahan to repel his 
more direct accusations against Jesuit colleges, 
has joined hands with Harvard's president in 
his crusade against Catholic classic institutes 
here in New England ?" 



President Eliot and Jesuit Colleges. 
A "Defence. 

I. 

Mr. Charles W. Eliot, President of 
Harvard University, published some 
time ago in the Atlantic Monthly, an 
article advocating the extension of his 
elective system to secondary or high 
schools. Before dismissing his subject 
he saw fit to transgress the proper scope 
of his paper, as indicated by its title, in 
order to express his views on Moslem 
and Jesuit Colleges. What peculiar as- 
sociation of ideas is responsible for the 
yoking of Moslems and Jesuits in the 
same educational category it would be 
unprofitable to inquire, since it is a 
question of merely personal psychol- 
ogy. The present writer, having no 
brief for the Moslems, is concerned only 
with the strictures on the Jesuit system. 
These he thinks are unfounded, sin- 
gularly inexact, and merit attention 
solely from the fact that they are the 
pronouncements of a man standing high 
in his profession. 

The convictions of one holding the 
position of the President of Harvard 
University will naturally carry weight in 
educational matters. President Eliot 



4 

has been at the head of one of our most 
prominent universities for over thirty- 
years. It is no doubt due largely to his 
executive ability that the institution 
which he has governed so long has been 
so successful financially, and received 
that organization to which it owes, in 
part at least, its present popularity. It 
will be presumed therefore that he has 
made himself acquainted with a system 
of education which he thinks proper to 
criticize publicly. It will scarcely be 
expected that an educator of his promi- 
nence would thoughtlessly, or under the 
stress of any undue feeling, commit him- 
self in a magazine article to adverse 
comments on a system which he did not 
deem worth his study. 

President Eliot's estimate of the Jesuit 
system is expressed in the following 
passage in his paper : ' ' There are those 
who say that there should be no election 

of studies in secondary schools 

This is precisely the method followed in 
Moslem countries, where the Koran* 
prescribes the perfect education to be 
administered to all children alike. The 
prescription begins in the primary schools 



*Though not directly bearing on the issue 
met by the present paper, it would nevertheless, 
for the sake of erudition, interest many to have 
President Eliot cite or at least give references 
to the passages of the Koran where this com- 
prehensive prescription of studies is found. 



5 
and extends straight through the uni- 
versity ; and almost the only mental 
power cultivated is memory. Another 
instance of uniform prescribed education^ 
may be found in the curriculum of the 
Jesuit Colleges, which has remained 
almost unchanged for four hundred years, 
disregarding some trifling concessions to 
natural sciences. That these examples 
are both ecclesiastical is not without 
significance. Nothing but an unhesitat- 
ing belief in the divine wisdom of such 
prescriptions can justify them ; for no 
human wisdom is equal to contriving a 
prescribed course of study equally good 
for even two children of the same family 
between the ages of eight and eighteen. 
Direct revelation from on high would be 
the only satisfactory basis for a uniform 
prescribed school curriculum. The im- 
mense deepening and expanding of hu- 
man knowledge in the nineteenth century, 
and the increasing sense of the sanctity 
of the individual's gifts and will-power 
have made uniform prescriptions of study 
in secondary schools impossible and 
absurd." 

Aside from the derogatory insinuations 
contained in this passage, the average 
reader will carry away from the perusal 
of it two main assertions : ( i ) that the 
Jesuit system of education implies a uni- 
form prescribed curriculum of Moslem- 
like rigidity ; (2) that the natural dis- 



6 
parity of the individual student in gifts 
and will-power, the finite wisdom of the 
educator, and the increase of human 
knowledge are such as to necessitate the 
widest application of the elective system, 
The first proposition enunciates what 
is claimed to be a fact, the second as- 
serts a theory. These propositions, as we 
shall see, are extreme, and certainly not 
correlative. The negation of one does 
not infer the other. But in the truth of 
either the Jesuit system is condemned, 
not necessarily as a system of education, 
but as a system adapted to modern re- 
quirements. If the Jesuit system is as 
rigid in its prescribed matter as the 
system attributed to the Moslem, then it 
has failed to keep up with the modern 
development of knowledge, and to utilize 
modern sciences that possess educational 
values. If on the other hand all uni- 
form prescriptions of study are ' ' absurd 
and impossible," if no two individuals 
even of the same family can be submit- 
ted to the same uniform course of study, 
if only unlimited ' ' electivism ' ' is wise 
and possible, then undoubtedly the Jesuit 
system, and the system of many colleges 
wholly independent of the Jesuits, are 
condemned. In fact, if the principles of 
M electivism " must be applied to the ed- 
ucation of every child of eight years and 
upward, it looks as if the President of 
Harvard had rung the death knell of all 



7 
system, not only for colleges and high 
schools, but for primary schools as well ; 
and we shall yet witness the exhilarating 
spectacle of ' ' tots ' ' of eight or ten years 
of age gravely electing their courses 
under the guidance, or rather with the 
approval of their nurses. 

The state of the question as regards 
Jesuit Colleges may be clearer, if atten- 
tion is directed to a distinction which the 
present General of the Society of Jesus 
thought it advisable to emphasize in an 
address delivered by him at Kxaeten in 
Holland on January i, 1893. He warns 
his hearers not to confound the Jesuit 
method of studies with the matter to 
which that method is applied. For the 
first he claimed stability, to the second 
he conceded change. The distinction is, 
of course, obvious, but not necessarily 
always present to those who discuss 
Jesuit or other systems of education. 
Now, I understand President Eliot to 
disapprove of our method in so far as he 
advocates the elective system of Harvard, 
and to maintain that, even in the subjects 
studied, the Jesuit system has adhered to 
the curriculum of four hundred years ago, 
excepting some slight concession to the 
natural sciences. 

There is one way and only one way of 
investigating the truth of this last asser- 
tion. It is purely a question of facts.. 
The records are published. He who 



runs may read. In the second, fifth, 
ninth, and sixteenth volumes of the 
MonumentaPcedagogicaGermanice the his- 
tory of the formation and growth of the 
Jesuit system, finally embodied authori- 
tatively in the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, 
is given in all its details. One who 
wishes to find the facts need only 
contrast the studies indicated by 
the old Ratio Studiorum with the 
studies taught to-day in the various 
colleges of the Jesuits in various 
countries. One has only to com- 
pare, for instance, the program of studies 
at Georgetown College in Washington, 
at Stonyhurst College in England, at 
Feldkirch in Austria, at Kalocsa in 
Hungary, at Beyrouth in Syria, at the 
Ateneo Municipal in Manila, at Zi-ka-wei 
in China, in order to get a general, yet 
a fair idea, of the studies pursued in the 
Jesuit Colleges of to-day. By contrast- 
ing the courses employed in these col- 
leges with those employed in the 
seventeenth century we may de- 
cide the question of fact. Whether 
our recent critic made an investigation 
of this kind or something equivalent I 
have no means of knowing. He gives 
us no intimation of the grounds on which 
he builds his statements. He simply as- 
serts, with authoritative confidence and 
in a tone of finality, that for four hundred 
years there has been practically no change 



9 

in the curriculum of studies in Jesuit 
Colleges. He may have thought the ex- 
penditure of time required to find the 
facts would be ill-repaid by the results ; 
and in so thinking he may or may not be 
right. But in case he looked upon it as 
an unconscionable waste of time to ex- 
plore the arid wastes of the Koran or the 
Ratio Studiorum, being an educated man, 
and having an educated man's dislike for 
facts that are constructed out of fancy, 
he might with decorum have abstained 
from all positive statement on the matter. 
The bare facts are these. In the 
Jesuit schools of the seventeenth cen- 
tury the classes, which corresponded to 
the college* classes of Jesuit schools to- 
day, were the three higher classes of the 
Gymnasium, with one class from the 
Lyceum, viz., Suprema Grammatica y 
Humanitas, Rhetorica and Philosophia. 
These classes, except the first two, were 
not necessarily each to be completed in 
one year ; though it is the aim of the 
system in this country, when applied to 
diligent students, to have the courses, at 
least of the first three classes, finished in 
three years. The course of Philosophy 
may sometimes be extended beyond a 
year. The studies of the first three 
classes, by the Ratio of 1599, were the 
Latin and Greek languages and litera- 



ti use the word " College " in the sense 
which attaches to it in this country. 



ture. The preparatory studies for these 
classes were made in the Grammar 
classes, corresponding in some respects 
to our modern Latin high school. The 
student entering the class of Suprema 
Gramma tica, was reasonably familiar 
with the Latin and Greek languages, 
was able to read these languages, and to 
write Latin correctly, idiomatically and 
with some degree of ease. The purpose 
of his studies thereafter was to acquire 
the mental training and culture that 
came from an intelligent study of his 
authors as literature. The scope of the 
classes is indicated by the technical 
terms by which they are designated. 
In the judgment of those who planned 
the courses of 1599, that scope could be 
best attained by using the classic lan- 
guages — at that time almost the only 
available instruments of college educa- 
tion. It is true, that in these classes, 
there were collateral studies — called eru- 
ditio in the Ratio — comprising the histor- 
ical, geographical, ethnographical, criti- 
cal, or other learning required to use 
the author read in accordance with the 
scope of the class. The character of the 
class was determined, however, not by 
the authors read, but rather the authors 
were selected in keeping with the pur- 
pose of the class. In this connection, it 
may not be out of place to note a fallacy 
which the writer from personal experi- 



ence knows to obtain in places where 
one would judge it little likely to be 
found. The fallacy consists in measur- 
ing the grade of a class in a college 
course, by the author studied in that 
class. A mistake of this kind would 
indicate a very confused notion of edu- 
cational ends. It ought to be quite 
clear that Caesar's Commentaries, for 
instance, studied in the first year of a 
high school, for the purpose of acquiring 
a Iyatin vocabulary, and a knowledge of 
L,atin construction and idiom, is a vastly 
different thing from the study of the 
same Commentary by a body of young 
men, familiar with the I^atin language 
and of some maturity of mind, in order 
to acquire a knowledge of historical 
style ; that Homer's Iliad, studied by 
the high-school boy with one eye fixed 
on grammar and dictionary, is another 
book from that same Iliad, when read by 
a college student, in order to feel its epic 
power. Yet, undoubtedly, any one ac- 
quainted with the mechanical way of 
measuring class grades which is widely 
prevalent, at least in certain parts of 
this country, must confess that even 
those, who by their position ought to 
know the purpose of education, will at- 
tempt to determine a student's grade by 
the author he studied, and not by the 
end he had in view when studying that 
author, the method of studjang, and the 



consequent mental results.* The scope of 
these three classes, therefore, is a dis- 
tinct thing from the studies, or authors, 
which the Jesuit educators of the seven- 
teenth century used to attain their end. 
Keeping these precautionary remarks in 
view, it is admitted that the twenty-five 
hours a week, constituting the class 
work of Jesuit schools in the seven- 
teenth century, were practically devoted 
to the exclusive study of Latin and 
Greek. 

With these twenty-five hours a week 
employed in the studies of Latin and 
Greek, let us contrast the studies and 
hours in the Jesuit College of to-day. 
For brevity's sake I take one American 
college. Georgetown University in its 
Collegiate Department exacts twenty- 
seven and a half hours a week of class 
work from every student who is a candi- 
date for a college degree. But instead of 
one hundred per cent, of this time being 



*The same lamentable confusion is mani- 
fested regarding the natural sciences. Physics, 
for instance, is taught in some of our high 
schools before the boys know even geometry. 
The result is not scientific education, but con- 
ceit. It is true some so-called laboratory prac- 
tice is annexed. But in so far as any training 
of the mind in science, in inductive reasoning, 
in synthesis, and the faculty of observation is 
effected, the whole thing bears about the same 
relation to the teaching of science, that cate- 
chism does to theology. 



13 
given to L,atin and Greek as in the 
schools of the seventeenth century, only 
about fifty- three per cent, is given to 
those studies to-day. Three hundred 
years later, then, forty-seven per cent, of 
class time is conceded to modern 
studies. Evidently there has been some 
change in the last ' ' four hundred years, ' ' 
for nearly half of the class time has been 
wrested from the domain of Latin and 
Greek. This time is proportioned during 
four years to the study of English, 
mathematics, modern languages and 
natural sciences; specifically, three hours 
a week, exclusive of laboratory work, 
are assigned during the Sophomore 
and Junior years to natural sciences and 
eight hours a week during the Senior 
year. These facts are not difficult to 
obtain. Similar data may be had re- 
garding the class hours in other Jesuit 
colleges. In view of them I shall permit 
the reader to surmise on what ground the 
declaration is made, that " another in- 
stance of uniform prescribed education 
may be found in the curriculum of Jesuit 
colleges, which has remained almost un- 
changed for four hundred years, disre- 
garding some trifling concessions to nat- 
ural sciences."* 

Considering the scope of a college 
education, as distinct from university 



*The italics are the present writer's. 



14 
study ; if we measure the concessions 
made to natural sciences by the time 
given, by the maturity of mind brought 
to the study of them, I believe these 
periods devoted to the natural sciences 
are in excess of the amount required for 
graduation in most colleges. Every one 
knows that a young man may graduate 
and receive a college degree from Har- 
vard without having given any time 
whatsoever during his four years to the 
study of the natural sciences. And it 
would seem that in such cases Harvard 
has made no concession at all, either 
trifling or important, to natural scien- 
ces. 

This suggests an old fallacy appar- 
ently underlying the strictures on Jesuit 
Colleges — the confounding of the number 
of studies taught by a given college and 
the number which the individual student 
must complete before he is declared a 
Bachelor of Arts. In the first sense 
Harvard has made large concessions to 
natural sciences ; in the second, it has 
made large concessions to individual 
students — the concessions to let all 
science largely alone. If a college is 
distinguished from a university in this, 
that a college gives ' ' a systematic disci- 
pline in liberal studies "* — and this dis- 
tinction has not as yet become obsolete — 



* Johns Hopkins Register, 1888-89, p. 145. 



i5 
then the value of a college curriculum 
ought to be settled by its application to 
the student, and not by vast programs 
announcing a multiplicity of studies 
which the student is at liberty to neglect. 
No wise man will estimate the value of 
a student's degree by this program, but 
by the studies which in fact the student 
does elect and master. And it is evident 
that that degree varies in significance to 
such an extent as to render it almost 
meaningless. It is a fact, however, that 
the unobservant, not necessarily the un- 
educated, judge the educational standard 
of a college by these elaborate programs, 
and not by the minute parts which the 
candidate for a degree undertakes to 
study. It would be very interesting to 
know, but it is difficult to discover, what 
courses the main body of students do 
actually elect in colleges in which studies 
are elective ; what percentage of those 
who obtain a degree, do so on what 
they irreverently call "snap" courses. 
Until we have this information in detail, 
it is useless to write of ' ' trifling conces- 
sions to the natural sciences," or in fact 
to any other sciences. 

' ' Four hundred years ' ' is, it seems to 
me, another misleading phrase in the 
criticism I am examining. ' ' Four hun- 
dred years of unchanged uniformity" 
has an impressive sound in this mutable 
age when progress is in danger of being 



i6 
identified with change.* We must first 
note that the expanding of knowledge — 
whatever may be said of its deepening — 
the growth and differentiation of sciences 
are of recent development. Consequent- 
ly it may be safely asserted that up to 
about forty years ago the curricula of all 
colleges were substantially in accord with 
that elaborated by the Jesuits during the 
two hundred years that preceded their 
suppression in 1773. 

It is quite clear that the old curri- 
culum could not have made use of in- 
struments of education not yet invented. 
If the old program was retained, the rea- 
son evidently was that there was no 
new developed and coordinated body of 
learning or science to supplant it, or to 
claim equal rights with it. As soon as a 
new science was recognized to have 
reached a stage of coherency that gave it 
an educational value, we find that it was 
introduced into the curricula of nearly 
all our American colleges. But a com- 
plete change from the uniform described 
course is a policy of recent date. Until 
the school year of 1872-1873 there were 
prescribed studies for each of the four 



* There is some arithmetical confusion here, 
which I notice merely to dismiss it. The Jesuit 
Order was instituted in the year 1540, three hun- 
dred and fifty-nine years ago. The Jesuit method 
of studies was not fixed until 1599. The differ- 
ence between 1599 and 1899 is three hundreds 



17 

college years at Harvard. About that 
time it was discovered that no ' ' human 
wisdom was equal to contriving a pre- 
scribed course of study equally good ' ' 
for all Seniors. Thereafter this convic- 
tion gradually grew in extension until it 
comprehended at successive intervals the 
Junior, Sophomore and Freshman years. 
About fifteen years ago, then, after two 
centuries and a half of successful work 
in the field of education, Harvard rec- 
ognized that ' ' direct revelation from on 
high would be the only satisfactory basis 
for a prescribed school curriculum," and 
the present elective system that charac- 
terizes that institution was finally intro- 
duced. Fifteen years is a very short time 
in the history of an educational move- 
ment, yet within that brief span of years 
the elective system has become to its ad- 
vocates an educational fetich, which who- 
so does not reverence is deserving of 
anathema. Nevertheless, it would be 
too much to expect that it should have 
been adopted before it was invented. In 
so far, therefore, as it is a reproach to 
Jesuit Colleges not to have accepted that 
system, the " four hundred years " dwin- 
dle to fifteen. It would consequently have 
been more exact, though less telling, to 
have said that : For the last fifteen years 
the curriculum of Jesuit Colleges has re- 
mained practically unchanged. 

I am not citing these facts in praise or 



i8 
blame of either class of institutions. 
Nor am I claiming or denying or con- 
ceding a higher educational efficiency 
for the new program than for the old. 
There were brave men before Agamem- 
non. There were educated men graduated 
from Harvard before the advent of the 
system at present there in vogue. The 
number of graduates annually was not 
so large then as now. But it would cer- 
tainly be folly to intimate that the old 
system did not produce proportionately 
as large a percentage of men, who in the 
very best sense of the word were edu- 
cated scholars. In like manner the old 
program of the Jesuit Colleges did some- 
how, in spite of its alleged disregard for 
the "sanctity of the individual's gifts 
and will-power," and without " a direct 
revelation from on high," result in 
giving to the world trained, cultured, 
and investigating minds. None of this 
concerns the issue I have raised, or 
rather attempted to meet. My conten- 
tion deals exclusively with facts. I have 
endeavored to show that these facts are 
other than those proclaimed ; that the 
Jesuit curriculum has not remained un- 
changed for four hundred years ; that its 
concessions to natural sciences are not 
trifling ; that even as a recalcitrant 
against the wisdom of Harvard 's elective 
system these four hundred years ' ' writ ' ' 
small mean at the most fifteen. 



19 

II. 

But let us turn to the method of Jesuit 
education. It undoubtedly has remained 
unchanged for the last three hundred 
years. Do the exigencies of modern 
education call for its rejection in favor of 
the elective system of Harvard? Will 
anything short of ' ' an unhesitating be- 
lief in the Divine wisdom ' ' of its pre- 
scriptions justify non-compliance with 
this call ? Aside from a ' ' direct revela- 
tion from on high ' ' can any satisfactory 
basis be found for it ? 

About forty years ago a new problem 
began to present itself to educators. 
Human knowledge in certain lines had 
widened marvelously. New sciences 
sprang into being, old ones grew in am- 
plitude and extent, until no longer 
possessing a cohesive centre, they burst 
into a number of distinct and specific 
sciences. Coincident with this increase 
and multiplication of sciences, man's in- 
tellectual sympathies, interests, and 
bents varied and widened in range. 
President Eliot's premises began to con- 
front every one on whom the direction of 
an institution of higher education de- 
volved. " The immense deepening and 
expanding of human knowledge in the 
nineteenth century and the increasing 
sense of the sanctity of the individual's 
gifts and will-power ' ' rendered the old 



20 

solution of the problem inadequate on 
its practical side. The old solution had, 
it is true, the merit of unity, but the new 
problem demanded a fuller recognition 
of individuality. The difficulty that 
perplexed educators was to combine the 
principle of unity and the principle of 
individuality. The various departments 
of human knowledge had become so 
manifold that it was utterly impossible 
for any one mind to master them all. 
An attempt to do so even partially would 
have resulted in mental dissipation and 
loss of power. On the other hand 
awakened interests and broader outlooks 
would not be cramped within the pre- 
cincts of the old curriculum. Some mod- 
ification was therefore necessary. 

It was possible, of course, to ignore 
either of these two principles by fixing 
one's mind so exclusively on the other 
as to exaggerate it out of all due propor- 
tion. One might adhere to a rigid unity 
on existing lines, or one might give free 
rein to individuality. One might, from 
an educational point of view, look on the 
learning of the century as a vast ' ' sphere 
having its circumference everywhere and 
its centre nowhere ; " or one might re- 
tain a centre and the old circumference, 
and doggedly refuse to enlarge one's 
horizon. Either solution of the problem 
would be extreme. The first, among a 
people feeling the thrill of new intel- 



lectual life and the exaltation of widen- 
ing intellectual vistas, would probably for 
a time meet with more general popular- 
ity. As usual in a transitional era the 
pendulum would swing from extreme 
conservatism to extreme liberalism. Not 
all would distinguish between the lifeless 
unity of a crystal and the living unity of 
an oak, which, unchanged in kind, varies 
within its species in different environ- 
ments of climate, soil, and cultivation. 
A sane conservatism and a wise liberal- 
ism would run the risk of being dubbed 
antiquated, retrograde, reactionary. 

The problem is not easy of solution. 
That solution will necessarily be the out- 
come of years of thought and experience. 
The selection from such a mass of educa- 
tional matter, and the coordination of the 
same to definite educational ends is not 
to be effected by a priori theories, and 
exaggerated rhetoric on the sanctity of 
one principle to the exclusion of the 
other ; nor by sweeping indictments of 
those whose heresy does not happen to 
be our heresy. There may be a medium 
between the alternatives of rigid uniform- 
ity and extreme " electivism," and it 
may be possible to discover that medium 
without the immediate and direct inter- 
position of Divine wisdom. Some toler- 
ant self-restraint, some wise distrust of 
one's own infallibility, some deference to 
the experience of the past — which is not 



wholly worthless — with experience, hard 
thinking, and mutual cooperation may 
solve this problem. It is not more diffi- 
cult than others which the human mind 
has solved. 

President Eliot's method of solving the 
difficulty is simplicity itself. He banishes 
unity from college education and bows 
down before individuality. And the 
curious phase of the matter is, he fancies 
this is a solution. He cuts the knot by 
having the educator abdicate his pre- 
tended functions, and by committing the 
whole embarrassment to the individual 
student, who panoplied in " the sanctity 
of his gifts and will-power ' ' casts it aside 
with the ease and grace of youth. The 
young man applying for an education is 
told to look out on the wide realm of 
learning, to him unknown and untrodden, 
and to elect his path. To do this with 
judgment and discrimination, he must 
know the end he wishes to reach ; he must 
moreover know himself — his mental and 
moral characteristics, his aptitudes, his 
temperament, his tastes ; and finally, he 
must know which of the numberless paths 
will lead him to the goal of his ambition, 
what combination of studies will open up 
the Via Sacra that leads to success. 
There are some restrictions, it is true, 
which hamper his election. For instance, 
he must avoid in his choice of studies 
any conflict between the hours appointed 



23 

for recitations and examination. He is 
"strongly urged to choose his studies 
with the utmost caution and under the 
best advice. ' ' But these provisions do not 
modify the general character of the 
system. He must distinctly understand 
that it is no longer the province of his 
Alma Mater to act as an earthly provi- 
dence to him. Circumstances have obliged 
her to become a caterer. Each student 
is free to choose his own intellectual 
pabulum, and must assume in the main the 
direction of his own studies. If he solve 
the problem wisely, to him the profit; if 
unwisely, this same Alma Noverca dis- 
claims the responsibility. The blame lies 
with himself, and for the present — until 
the elective system is introduced into our 
high schools — with those who had charge 
of his secondary education. If he is a 
careless student, having as yet no definite 
purpose to guide him, let him assume a 
purpose and reform. Is he not eighteen 
years of age ? 

This is the solution of the problem by 
the present elective system of Harvard. 
Now, the only question raised in this 
paper is : whether all educators are 
obliged to choose between this system 
and a prescribed system based on "direct 
revelation from on high ; ' ' whether a 
refusal to accept this system is ' ' absurd 
and impossible." I am not, therefore, 
inquiring into its merits or demerits 



24 

except in so far as I am compelled to do 
so in defense of the Jesuit system. It 
may be, for all I now care, a makeshift, 
hopelessly adopted by those who were 
nonplussed by the intractable elements 
of the problem, or a step in the evolution 
of a plan devised for the elimination of 
the college from our American education. 
If there are any who are satisfied with it, 
to them the Jesuits have nothing to say 
beyond the words of St. Paul, ' ' Let 
every man abound in his own sense." 
But they discount the implied challenge 
either to reject their system or to adduce 
"direct revelation from on high" in its 
favor. 

The most persistent argument advanced 
in proof of the elective system is drawn 
from the individual differences of stu- 
dents. We sometimes hear Leibnitz 
quoted in this connection as having said 
that no two leaves of the same tree are 
alike. It may be doubted whether a man 
of Leibnitz's intellectual balance ever 
made such a lop-sided assertion. Any 
woodman could have told him that an 
oak leaf may be recognized at sight. 
This could not be done, if they were not 
similar. To fix one's eyes on accidental 
differences and close one's eyes to essen- 
tial similitude would be an example of 
elective observation not creditable to a 
philosopher. It may seem trifling to 
insist on this truism, and in fact the 



25 

matter is trifling. But what other con- 
fusion is implied in the absolute certainty, 
that "no human wisdom is equal to con- 
triving a prescribed course of study 
equally good for even two children of the 
same family, between the ages of eight 
and eighteen," except that which comes 
from emphasizing accidental differences 
and ignoring essential conformity ? St. 
Thomas Aquinas holds that no two 
angels are in the same species. President 
Eliot comes perilously near predicating 
the same specific diversity of children. 
That boys vary in talents, in powers of 
application, in mental tendencies and 
aptitudes, is quite obvious; but we must 
also admit that they have intellectual 
faculties essentially similar, unless we 
are willing to maintain that they are 
kindred to the angels of Aquinas. Their 
specific unity is essential; their individual 
differences are accidental. All boys have 
those faculties by which they are scienti- 
fically classed as belonging to the genus 
homo ; memory, powers of observation, 
of reasoning, of judgment, of imagina- 
tion and of discrimination ; though for 
native or wilful reasons they may not all 
be capable of equal culture. 

A system of education which neglects 
either aspect of the subject is defective ; 
and it is not evident that that is least 
defective which discards unity. The 
same arguments that are offered for 



26 

' ' electivism ' ' in mental education will 
apply to ' ' electivism ' ' in physical train- 
ing. Man is a unit mentally as well 
as physically. The exclusive and abnor- 
mal development of one side of his 
mind is as destructive of the ' ' whole 
man, the polished man and the rounded 
man" when consequent on partial mental 
education as would be the specialized 
training of an athlete which neglected 
certain classes of muscles. Prior to spe- 
cialization in athletics the wise director 
of a gymnasium will demand rounded 
physical development. The man whose 
whole education has been special or elec- 
tive is as pitiable an object as a hollow- 
chested acrobat who can toss barrels with 
his feet. Both have undergone "training 
for power," both have made a thorough 
study of a few things, but both will re- 
main to the end of their da}^s educational 
curiosities. If the elective system were 
applied to the visible and material, its 
absurdity would be instantly detected. 
Because the region of its application is 
supersensible it is foisted on us with a 
cloud of sophistry arising from a jumble 
of political economy and psychology. 
One wonders sometimes whether the rea- 
sons adduced in its favor were really 
premises by which convictions were 
formed, or merely arguments to shore 
up a foregone conclusion. 

This is the fundamental ground on 



27 

which the Jesuit method is at variance 
with the system of elective studies in 
use at Harvard. That system of itself 
has no unity. No quantity of theory, 
no frequent profession of educational 
principles speculatively correct, can ob- 
scure the fact that in practice President 
Eliot has abandoned the doctrine of unity 
in education. The Jesuits hold that 
doctrine of prime importance in collegiate 
training and formation. The causes 
assigned as motives for its desertion are 
not of such evident cogency as to put 
the only excuse for loyalty to it in " a 
revelation from on high." Relying 
merely on the light of reason, its deser- 
tion universally in this country would in 
the judgment of the Jesuits be disastrous. 
It would tend to lower the standard of 
education, to lessen the intrinsic value 
of a college degree, to give one-sided 
formation, to unfit men for effective 
University work. 

President Thwing, of the Western 
Reserve University, in a recent paper 
declares that the ' ' bane of our educa- 
tional system is haphazardness in the 
choice of studies." President Harper, 
of Chicago University, in his address at 
the inauguration of the new president of 
Brown University, is even more em- 
phatic, characterizing our present educa- 
tional system as chaotic. Other citations 
might be added from men of equal 



28 

standing in the world of education. 
Inevitably with haphazardness and chaos 
as notes of the system, the standard of 
education is going to depend on those 
who direct their own education. The 
present writer's experience does not 
cover the period " between the ages of 
eight and eighteen," but he does know 
from some years of observation, that be- 
tween the ages of fourteen and twenty the 
average boy will work, like electricity, 
along the line of least resistance. And he 
is confident that his experience is not pe- 
culiar. To apply to their education, there- 
fore, university methods applicable only 
to men of intellectual and moral maturity, 
before they are able to feel judiciously the 
relations of their studies to their life's 
purpose, must necessarily put to some 
extent the standard of education under 
their control, and almost wholly commit 
to them the character of their own form- 
ation. 

Here I may notice the appeal that is 
made in behalf of this policy to the 
"sanctity of the individual's gifts and 
powers." "The greatest reverence is 
due to boys," cries the old Roman satir- 
ist, and who will dare gainsay it ? But 
an abiding sense of that very reverence 
inspires the Jesuit educator with the 
belief, that it is an unhallowed thing to 
make the plastic souls and hearts and 
minds of those entrusted to their care 



2 9 

the subjects of untried, revolutionary 
and wholesale experiment. Precisely 
because they believe in the sanctity of 
the individual they will not admit the 
advisability of subjecting them — as 
though they were small quadrupeds — 
to novel experiments in educational 
laboratories. Because they know that 
the boy of to-day will be to-morrow the 
maker of his country's destiny, will 
fashion its future, will shape for good or 
ill the forces that will give it stability or 
bring it ruin, they have hesitated to 
announce a go-as-you-please program of 
studies and a haphazard and chaotic 
system of formation. Because they be- 
lieve the soul of a boy a sacred thing 
destined for an eternal life hereafter, to be 
attained by a noble life here, they have 
recognized the delicacy and responsibility 
of their functions, and have been satis- 
fied with a safer and more conservative 
advance. In this regard for the moral 
aspects of education, they do possess 
the note " ecclesiastical," which Presi- 
dent Eliot finds significant. Fortu- 
nately, however, in this respect the 
Jesuit Colleges do not consort with the 
Moslem alone, but find themselves in the 
company of many excellent non-Catholic 
Colleges, in this country. It seems 
strange, and would be incredible had we 
not evidence, that any one professing to 
be an educator and acquainted with 



3o 
human nature in its formative period, 
should in this century maintain with 
such dogmatic intensity the exclusive 
wisdom of permitting boys to elect the 
studies by which their manhood will be 
moulded. 

The distinction between the functions 
of a college and a university has been so 
often, so fully, and so definitely exposed 
that it seems impertinent to call a read- 
er's attention to it again. Yet recog- 
nized truths in the presence of active 
adversaries need reiteration. The elec- 
tive system retains the distinction in 
name ; but has in the first place brushed 
aside all real distinction between them, 
and in the second, is by trend, if not by 
purpose, tending to eliminate the college 
from our American system. It was ap- 
parently to this President Hadley re- 
ferred in his inauguration address, when 
he said : "I cannot believe that any 
one who has watched the working of the 
French or German system would desire 
to see it introduced into this country." 

President Seth Low defines very clearly 
the distinction between a college and 
university in saying : "A college is con- 
ceived of as a place of liberal culture, 
a university as a place for specialization 
based upon liberal culture. ' ' The func- 
tions of a college, therefore, may be 
grouped under two heads : first, it gives 
that rounded and harmonious mental 



3i 

development, which the word education 
etymologically signifies; and secondly it 
lays "a solid substructure in the whole 
mind and character for any superstruct- 
ure of science, professional or special, 
also for the building up of moral life, 
civil and religious."* 

The all important aim of a college 
should be to give such formation and in- 
formation as will enable the student to 
choose his career in life, to elect, if need 
be, his profession or his specialty in the 
university. ' ' Election should presup- 
pose on the elector's part some knowl- 
edge of the subjects elected " is, I be- 
lieve, the saying of one of Harvard's 
most cultured sons, assuredly one of her 
wise ones. To choose as an expert and 
not as an empiric one must have made 
experience of one's strength intelligently 
in many fields. A boy cannot safely 
trust his untried fancies, whims, or 
juvenile interests. The young lad of 
ten years of age, whose father is a bank- 
er, a writer, or a college president, will 
often find the life of a motorman or a 
horse- trainer an attraction. The boy of 
larger growth will be less immature in 
his choice of what appeals to him as an 
ideal life, but he will not be safer. He 
has not had the opportunity of knowing 
even remotely the contents of the several 



* Boston College Catalogue, 1898-1899. 



32 

caskets which contain his true vocation. 
Like the luckless Morocco he may judge 
from exterior glitter, and thus frustrate 
his own life purpose, or curtail its use- 
fulness. 

The college, therefore, is distinct from 
the university in the mental and moral 
disciplines applied to the student. The 
college forms its ward, providing disci- 
plines by which he may be developed 
into a man of the three Horatian dimen- 
sions ; the university informs its mem- 
bers, offering courses of studies which 
presuppose not merely " training for 
power, ' ' but distinctively liberal culture. 
There may be electives in colleges, but 
they are from the very concept of a col- 
lege incidental, collateral, and postula- 
ting previous advance. Electives consti- 
tute the intrinsic attribute of a university. 
The college undertakes to mould the 
character of the boy or half-man to 
habits of patient industry, of mental and 
moral temperance, and of wide intelli- 
gent interests. Its supervision over his 
moral life is as systematic as that over 
his mental life. By the constant exer- 
cise and concordant enlargement of many 
faculties, by an introduction to many 
sciences, by grounding in logic, in the 
general principles of philosophy, and in 
ethics, it preserves any one faculty in 
the formative period of life from so ab- 
normally developing as to stunt or 



33 
atrophy others ; it widens the outlook, 
warding off the conceit and self-sufficiency 
of the boy specialist ;* it lays before him 
in large outline a map of the realm he 
may afterwards traverse in part and in 
detail, and it coordinates and relates his 
after specialty to other learning. A col- 
lege is aware that a boy has idiosyn- 
crasies as well as sanctities ; that by 
education these sanctities are brought 
out and the idiosyncrasies gently rubbed 
off and their wild exuberant growths 
pruned. The college is, therefore, in its 
method of teaching primarily tutorial, 
not professorial. The formation it pro- 
poses to give is not by accident in indi- 
vidual cases, but by design universally 
effected by personal and intimate rela- 
tions between small groups of pupils and 
a teacher, whose duty comprehends 
guidance, advice, and encouragement, as 
well as instruction. Such a scheme of 
education gives the college student time 
and opportunity to study and compare 
his capacities and inclinations, and helps 
him to make a life decision which shall 
be founded on observation, experience, 



* " There is no doubt that the tendency to 
specializing in our educational system, even 
from the beginning of the studies of youth, as 
contrasted with childhood, is excessive, and 
that if the best education is to continue, this 
tendency must be counteracted." — President 
Dwight, in his Report cf 1899. 



34 
and reason. An opponent of this view 
would miss or confuse the scope of sec- 
ondary and college education, if he 
argued that this system ' ' has compelled 
the determination of the pupil's life 
destination at the early age of ten to 
fourteen." To recur to an illustration 
already used, the general training of an 
athlete in a gymnasium does not deter- 
mine his after specialty, rather it mani- 
fests to him and his directors aptitudes 
and grounds for a discreet determination. 
The whole contention of this paper is 
summed up in a very apt metaphor of 
President Stryker, of Hamilton College. 
Contrasting the disciplines of a college 
and the investigations of a university, 
he says : ( ' The processes have different 
conclusions. One should make iron into 
steel and the other make steel into tools. 
Specialization not ' based upon a liberal 
culture ' attempts to put an edge on pot- 
iron." 

The elective system of Harvard, car- 
ried into secondary schools and colleges 
to a logical and consistent issue, would 
be the application to education of the 
economic principle of the division of 
labor, which sinks the individual for the 
sake of the product. It might produce 
experts, but could not develop a man. 
We should have a crop of those specialists 
whom Oliver Wendell Holmes so genially 
portrays in his Breakfast Table series, 



35 
but the elective system would not give 
us a Holmes. We might have ministers, 
theologues, but we should not be in- 
debted to the elective system for a Phil- 
lips Brooks. We might get from such a 
system educators, knowing books and 
the science and history of education; but 
we should scarcely get a Father Fulton, 
knowing boys and skilled in the art of 
education. Lawyers too it may produce, 
but scarcely a Rufus Choate; bankers, 
but not Stedmans; literary men skilled 
in the technique of their art, but with 
no horizon outside of their sphere. In 
a word: 

" Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. . . . 
And the individual withers, and the world is 
more and more." 

In conclusion we submit with all due 
deference that President Eliot's reflec- 
tions on Jesuit schools need recension. 
His declaration that the Jesuit curri- 
culum has been marked by four hundred 
years of almost changeless uniformity is 
unfounded. His exaggerated statement 
that the method of Jesuit schools is jus- 
tified only by "an unhesitating belief in 
the Divine Wisdom ' ' of such a method 
is somewhat humorous, but not con- 
vincing. His implied challenge demand- 
ing either evidence of a " direct revela- 
tion from on high "as a basis of that 
method, or its rejection as ' ' absurd and 
impossible" is a defective dilemma. 



36 
Why may not a body of men by the mere 
light of human reason be persuaded of 
the unwisdom of haphazardness and 
chaos, and the necessity of unity in col- 
lege education without being challenged 
to show their credentials from on high ? 
They must confess they have no such 
credentials. Then abandon your method 
and adopt my elective system, is Presi- 
dent Eliot's implied inference. There is 
a non-sequitur here so surprising that 
perforce we are driven to surmise that 
behind this paralogism there is an eso- 
teric reason for this attack which we 
have not discerned. 

President Eliot's whole career hereto- 
fore forbids us to put any interpretation 
on it which would imply that he was 
even subconsciously motived by unreas- 
onable hostility. What inspired this 
criticism of Jesuit schools, therefore, we 
can not even conjecture. We can only 
await further enlightenment, assuring 
the President of Harvard that if he give 
reasons for his dislike of our methods 
they will always get that respectful con- 
sideration due them because of his po- 
sition and personal worth. 

Timothy Brosnahan, SJ. 

Woodstock, Md. 



.... REPRINTED . 
FROM THE 

SACRED HEART REVIEW 

JANUARY 13, 1900 



